Running Long, Vince Sighting, Santa doing Calistenics

Yesterday brought the dreaded super exciting long run of the week. We had 17 miles on the table and since we haven't had a long run, well, yet in this training cycle (since we have missed some runs), we were both a bit nervous. On Friday I was up at 4:30am and went to bed around 1am, got up at 6:30am on Saturday for meetings and so I crashed pretty hard when we went to bed on Saturday night. So hard in fact that I missed the 7am alarm completely and ended up getting up at 8am. Both Jason and I were slow to actually get out of bed, but we finally did, had some toast for breakfast laced up the ole' shoes and headed out.

The first few miles were...oh, I don't know, fine I guess. I was doing the thing where I was thinking about how many miles were left (16) instead of thinking of how many I had gotten through or thinking of the run in pieces(ala "ok, just get to the lake front...worry about that first, then think about what's next"). I was pretty frustrated, but kept moving forward knowing that I was going to be way more pissed off if I turned around and went home than if I just dealt with the running and kept going. Around 2.5 miles we stopped and stretched for a few minutes and then kept on heading down Chicago Ave.

This was about 9:30 on a Sunday morning, and usually the streets are pretty empty or people with Jeans and sweatshirts on and their Starbucks & Tribune walking the streets. We noticed on Rush that there were a bunch of movie trucks, which we had noticed but didn't phase us at all. The second that we passed Rush street, the sidewalks were thick with people, kind of dressed up and looking really nice. I thought maybe a church had let out or something because it was very odd street traffic for a Sunday morning. We get to the corner of Michigan and Chicago and look across the street (in front of the Ralph Lauren store) and see the filming of the movie actualy taking place. You know that Chicago is still a midwestern city because we still get very excited about movie stars......and what do you know.....standing on the corner going through a scene is one of my favorie actors....VINCE VAUGHN. So of course I stop my watch since I was going to be stationary for awhile while we watched.

You could almost instantly tell that it was him because of his acting style, and then we noticed the extras. They had people dressed pretty nicely walking behind Vince (notice how I got by his first name...cause we are so close like that), they would walk towards rush on Chicago, turn around head back to Michigan and head South for a bit and then back to Chicago and so on. We are wondering now if there is ever a movie with people walking behind the main scene if there are repeats since apparently they are just walking in a loop. I am hoping that maybe the camera was zoomed out and they could see the North side of Chicago ave and then maybe us running will be in there :-)

So that was very exciting, but the scene ended and I know that we had a lot more running to do. So we kept heading east. When we got to the stairs that will lead under Lake Shore Drive to the lake front path, we saw tons of trailers...I am assuming for the actors. But outside the trailers were a bunch of Santa's one of who was running around and doing high stepping and ...well, like the warmups that you would do if you were in high school track. It was a very comical scene and the talking about how we "just saw vince VAUGHN!!!!!" kept us going for another 4 miles. At this point we were about 1/2 way done and from then on...well, then every step means that the distance you have left is shorter than what you did and helps with the mental game.

Since there is only one fountain on (the CARA donated one that has water running all the time....why don't they have one of these on the south side...or at several places on the path?) we haven't been taking any kind of Gu or sports beans or anything. I thought all of that stuff was just helpful for the run but not necessarily necessary (if that makes sense). I was very, very tired the last 4 miles of the run. We ended up having to stop in a Quiznos and get a glass of water. We are going to get some Gu's for next week's 18miler and try and take it at the said water fountain.

The great news is that we did 47 MILES last week. That's the most that we have done in a really long time, which is exciting. Oh yeah and the movie that Vince is shooting is I think a Christmas movie coming out at the end of the year called Fred Claus....something about Santa's crabby brother or something.

Alright...on to Monday...blech